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But Monday’s city council meeting perhaps only delayed the inevitable opening up of Housler and its dead-end Siamese twin, Hammet Street, to through traffic.

“There’s not a lot of encouragement,” Housler resident Kent Collins said after city council put off making a decision until a new report is tabled on Feb. 25.

Safety is a word that swirls around the Hammet-Housler drama known as Gate-gate.

City fire chief Bill Chesney wants the troublesome gate between the two streets, for emergency vehicle use only, removed so fire trucks can get to calls more quickly.

Various gates through the years have proven unreliable or outright failures, he says.

Residents of Housler say a through street will pose a safety risk to their kids and the kids who go to nearby Our Lady of Fatima school.

Residents like the two flexible posts serving a temporary gate in recent weeks.

The fire chief doesn’t see those posts as a permanent solution to issues of vandalism.

Should the street become a long thoroughfare, Housler residents expect their property values to plummet along with the safety level on their street, which opened in 2005.

“Ten to 15 per cent,” Collins said.

Councillors seek a compromise that may not be easily uncovered. But they want to.

“Can we be reasonable here?” Hespeler Coun. Rick Cowsill said. “We need to be reasonable for the people of the community. They’ve lived here for the last five or six years with a safety factor. And now it’s being taken — potentially — being taken away.”

Susan Burr has lived on Hammet for 37 years.

If this change is coming, and the two streets merge, it’ll be one of many changes she has endured as Hespeler has grown.

“Is it going to be Housler complete? Or Hammet complete?” Burr asked.

“I hate to think of the number of documents I would have to change if it became Housler.”